I'm having a lot of fun with this mod, but I did have a question:
It seems like this mod makes it very difficult to have any sort of diplomacy in the early going, except by luck of the draw. For example, until you get Writing and then have time to build a Messenger and travel him all the way to a city-state, there's practically no way to improve your standing with a city-state unless they offer you a quest.
For example, in my recent game, I met Oslo in the early going. I dealt with some barbarians for them, and got a nice boost, but then more and more time went by, and I didn't have Writing yet, and they didn't offer any more quests. So, I lost my friendship status with them, and lacked any way to bump them up to "allies." Since it was fairly early in the game, there was no way I could afford the cost of a diplomatic mission.
In vanilla, of course, you could throw 250 gold at them to keep things friendly.
It might be nice to have some way to maintain or improve relationships in the early game. One example might be to allow gifts of gold, just not have them affect the friendship so much. For example, 10 gold would prevent the friendship number from going down for one turn. It wouldn't INCREASE it, so you could never BUY friends, but it would prevent you from losing ground with them.
I realize Writing isn't all that far down the technology tree, but in the early going, there are so many critical building tasks, that it's very risky (IMO) to spend 5~7 turns building a messenger when you are in desperate need of settlers, workers, military, and basic buildings.
Thoughts?